Lessons from The NEW Community Manager Handbook is a limited-run podcast series, featuring the 21 community leaders showcased in the Handbook in conversation with Anne Mbugua.

Episode 8 features Mary Lightfoot, Senior Digital Learning Manager – Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University.

Mary and Anne explore how communities can approach accessibility in their programs, including ways community managers can make improvements to the accessibility options available to their members.

Listen to Mary Lightfoot on Community Accessibility

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About Mary Lightfoot

Mary has more than twenty years of interpreting experience with a current specialization in the intersection of technology and interpreting, and is interested in the application of technology to the field of interpretation as well as interpreting various facets of computer-related technology. She is experienced in areas of education, government, business, mental health, theatrical, medical, conference work, and video interpreting (both VRS and VRI).

Mary is currently the Senior Digital Learning Manager with more than ten years of using instructional design for projects and using learning technologies for developing and implementing synchronous and asynchronous learning; Project management experience with projects of both regional and national scope. She has experience working with synchronous technologies creating and managing live webinars and panel discussions; working with asynchronous distance technologies involving project instructional design, project management, and running online learning communities; and over 10 years experience using Learning Management Systems and use of SCORM to integrate eLearning files, interest in the use of xAPI for metrics within and between training elements. She also has experience in online community management, focusing on creating and managing engaging national-level external communities, using Salesforce Experience Cloud and Appinium LMS.

About Gallaudet University

Gallaudet University is a world-class institution with a rich history of transformation and impact. For more than 150 years, Gallaudet has been the political, social, and economic engine of the signing community.

Laurent Clerc and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet crossed the Atlantic from Paris, France, in 1816  to open the country’s first school for the deaf. In 1864, with the support of Congress and President Abraham Lincoln, they extended their vision with Gallaudet University. 

Gallaudet became a beacon for visual learning, visual language, social justice, and full rights for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Since then, we have proceeded to become the Gallaudet University that even President Abraham Lincoln could not have imagined. 

Today, Gallaudet is the go-to source on the deaf and signing community — a rich source of history, knowledge, achievement, and inspiration. But we are even more than that. Gallaudet is a global agent of change— a hub of the signing ecosystem, preparing students to flourish, and helping society value and appreciate all that deaf people have to offer. 

Our Gallaudet community hails from all 50 states and nearly 100 countries. We have 23,000 alumni worldwide. We’re a university that teaches and transforms unlike anywhere else.

About The NEW Community Manager Handbook

The NEW Community Manager Handbook features 21 profiles of community leaders sharing advice and ideas on everything from accessibility, hiring, strategy, gamification, defining the digital workplace, technology, and more. Each profile is paired with research from the State of Community Management reports and includes tactical advice for implementing what you’ve learned.

Learn from community management experts at Easterseals, Glencore, Microsoft, UKG, the World Bank Group, Analog Devices, Inc., AAMC, Zapier, Doctors Without Borders, and more.